Larry Cohen Page 3

  No, not at all. I don’t see any connection between them and the work that I do. I haven’t drawn upon them to create certain characters in my movies. Well, actually, I once wrote a play that we performed in New York called Washington Heights and that was about the family and my childhood.

  Do you know how your parents met?

  They met at a dance and, apparently, on their very first date, they went to see a horror film. It was The Invisible Man, directed by James Whale and starring Claude Rains. Looking back, maybe that’s what first influenced me and set me on this path. Maybe it was the fact my parents went to see that movie on their very first date that inspired me to direct horror films. [Chuckles] I don’t know.

  You said that your father felt “trapped,” but was theirs a happy marriage?

  It was relatively happy, yes. My parents lived in a very different time when people rarely got divorced. In fact, back then, you couldn’t even get a divorce. The Catholic Church had such a lock on the political arm of the Government in New York State you couldn’t secure a divorce in New York City. The only way you could get one was on the grounds of infidelity and, of course, you had to prove it. People used to hire what they called “co-respondents,” which was a person who would testify in court that they were having an affair with you, even if they weren’t! This was so someone could go to the judge and say, “My wife has been unfaithful and I want a divorce.” They literally faked infidelity in order to end the marriage. If you didn’t have the money to hire lawyers and co-respondents, it was almost impossible to get a divorce. People just didn’t have that kind of money, so they would simply have to endure and suffer the marriage for the rest of their lives. But my parents didn’t have that problem as their marriage was a relatively harmonious one.

  Did your family practice any particular type of religion?

  No, we were not religious at all. We were Jewish, but we didn’t practice Judaism. I’ve never been particularly interested in organized religion. I’ve never thought that anybody should be telling people what God wants them to do. They have no way of knowing anything about it and it’s presumptuous of them to take on the role of interpreting God’s will. I say, “Leave God alone and maybe He will leave you alone.” I never got into religion, but I do like to celebrate Christmas. I’ve always liked having a Christmas tree and I like giving and receiving presents. I enjoy having a good old Jingle Bells kind of Christmas. Of course, that really has nothing to do with religion.

  Did you have any literary passions during childhood? What were you reading?

  I read books like The Hardy Boys Mysteries and several of the classics like Treasure Island, things like that. I actually memorised half of Treasure Island so that I could recite it by heart. I often liked to do a trick at a party where I would go to a shelf and pick out a copy of Treasure Island as if I didn’t know it was going to be there. I would briefly glance at the book, then close it and suddenly start reciting it aloud. Everybody would just be amazed! [Laughs] I also used to collect comic books. In fact, I had a fabulous comic book collection that would probably now be worth more money than my father earned during his entire lifetime. Unfortunately, when I was away at camp one summer, my parents threw them all out. I came back home and saw that my entire cabinet was empty. When I queried them about this, they said, “Well, they were gathering dust and you are getting too old for them anyway.” These were all first editions of Batman, Superman, and Captain Marvel. It was a truly terrific collection and would have been worth tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps more. Of course, I can’t guarantee that if my parents had not thrown my comics out, I would have eventually thrown them out myself. I mean, who could have ever imagined they would now be worth as much as they are?

  Many of your contemporaries, such as George A. Romero and John Carpenter, enjoyed the EC Comics like Tales from the Crypt as kids. Were you also a fan?

  I remember those horror comics, but I wasn’t as passionate about them as perhaps those other guys were. I used to like a series of comic books that are a little obscure today called Crime Does Not Pay. These were comics that were very realistic as opposed to the rotting corpses and monsters of Tales from the Crypt. As a kid, I liked comic books that were more firmly based in reality, rather than ones that were about superheroes or the supernatural, although I liked them, too. You won’t find the Crime Does Not Pay comic books around much anymore, but some collectors might have them. I think the publisher actually ended up murdering his wife and, naturally, that was the end of the Crime Does Not Pay comics. Obviously crime really does not pay! But they were very good comics and somehow my tastes always ran back to them. They were more grown-up, intelligent, and sophisticated than most comics and contained intricate stories and interesting characters.

  You actually drew your own comics in your youth, didn’t you?

  Yeah, that was one of my principal hobbies as a boy. I would sit down and draw a sixty-four-page comic book with six panels on each page. I would really go to town on them. I would do a lot of detailed artwork and develop elaborate storylines that had complex dialogue and plotting. I did a bunch of these comic books and would sometimes even color them. Unfortunately, today, I don’t have those either. They are all gone now. Back in those days, I basically had to bribe people to read them. I used to give the other kids in the neighbourhood a free comic book — if they would read my comic book. I also used to put on little shows at my house and I’d invite the kids in the neighbourhood to come over. I had this slide machine and would put the slides up and have puppets and stuff. Again, I would have to bribe the kids to come over by giving them comic books, so it was a truly captive audience! My father would say, “Ah, you don’t have any friends! Nobody will have anything to do with you unless you give them a comic book.” That really made me feel good! [Chuckles] He once asked me why I didn’t have any friends come over to our house, and I said, “Well, Dad, because every time I do you embarrass me in front of them. That’s the reason.”

  You must have been a precocious child.

  Well, I guess I was the kind of kid who lived inside his own head to some extent. I was very creative with my free time and I liked to dream up movies and stories. When you’re a child, you do seem to be more in tune with your imagination and imaginative life. You’re not so self-conscious as you can be when you grow older. I think a lot of adults seem to lose the magic of childhood. Naturally, that’s because you have to get a job and get married and have children of your own. Then your dreams and desires change into something else with the new responsibilities you have. Your fantasy life, or the way your express yourself through creativity, can be reduced or abandoned. That was certainly true in my day, but maybe now things have changed. Today, it seems to be more acceptable for an adult to be a fan or a nerd and celebrate their interests and passions. You can be more childish and childlike now and nobody persecutes you for it. But yeah, I had a big imagination as a kid. I used to draw the comics and I would also create my own little radio shows. I got a tape recorder as a present and I started going into my bedroom and creating these programs — acting out all the parts and adding background music and everything. Like the comic books and the 8mm films, it was a way to get what was inside my head out into the real world.

  What about your musical tastes? Growing up, what were you listening to?

  I listened to whatever was popular at the time. I didn’t have any avant-garde tastes. As time went on, I got into The Beatles and all those rock and roll performers. Back in my early days, I particularly liked Big Band music. I also liked Latin American music because I used to go to dances in Manhattan on weekends. There would be Tito Puente [7] or some other live band playing Latin music. When I worked at various weekend resorts and summer resorts up in the Catskills Mountains, they were very favourable to Latin American dance music. So, I did shows up there, doing comedy routines, emceeing shows, and working weekends. A singer and I would tour different hotels and do two or three shows, and I thought at the time that I wanted to be a
comedian. But then I found out later on that I really didn’t like it. I didn’t like working at night. I didn’t like being occupied every single evening, performing, because I couldn’t have any kind of social life. All you could do is have some poor girl waiting around all night — waiting for you to get finished with your act so you could go have a drink together. I wouldn’t be through until one o’clock in the morning, so it was not something that I liked to do. When I later went to the City College of New York, I started putting on regular variety shows every Thursday afternoon, or every other Thursday afternoon, for an audience. We would do a complete review and have comedy sketches and a monologue.

  Did you enjoy that experience?

  Oh, yeah. I was acting like I was on television! Seriously, I had the crazy impression I was doing my own network television programme and had to devise a whole new show every week. So, we’d have singers and performers, and people who worked with me. We’d do our skits and for a while it was a lot of fun but, unfortunately, I didn’t like the kind of person it was making me. I was too full of myself, too oblivious of other individuals and what they might be feeling. I just didn’t see other people when they were talking to me. I didn’t know who they were and, frankly, I didn’t care. I was so self-centred I would do anything for a laugh. In my own mind, I was like a big comedy star or movie star. No, it wasn’t right. I didn’t like the kind of person I was becoming, so I just stopped doing the shows. I didn’t want to do that anymore.

  What did you want to do?

  Well, around this time, I had the idea that I wanted to become a writer instead. I suddenly switched into that gear, writing teleplays for New York TV programmes, and I put the comedy performing firmly behind me. I mean, I was good at comedy and felt I had a gift for writing and performing as it came very easily to me. As a kid, I was always the clown of the class at school. All the time, I would thrive on trying to get the other children to laugh. That usually drove the teachers crazy, but I always had to be the star. I would also frequent this coffeehouse in Manhattan called Hansen’s Drugstore where all the comedians would go. I used to go down there after high school and hang out on the corner and sell the comedians jokes. I would receive $10 for each joke, which seemed like a lot of dough back then. I wasn’t exactly making a fortune, but that didn’t matter because I was having a lot of fun. The only downside was that sometimes the comedians wouldn’t pay me for my jokes, which I didn’t think was fair. I kept harassing them for my money and, on one occasion, this comedian and his manager threatened to throw me out of an eleventh floor window if I asked them for my money again. That wasn’t very nice of them, but, hey, what can you do?

  When you went to the City College of New York you majored in film, correct?

  Yes. This was in the late 1950s, just before I started selling television scripts. CCNY didn’t have a regular film course in theatrical motion pictures. The course they offered was in documentary filmmaking, so I took that. I learned a lot about various aspects of filmmaking while I was attending there. I learned how to load the Cine-Kodak Special 16mm Camera; I learned how to shoot; I learned a little about camera lenses; and I learned quite a lot about how to edit film.

  Were there any famous teachers instructing you at CCNY?

  Actually, the best teacher we had was Gene Milford, who taught the editing class. Milford was a fabulous editor, who had cut a number of great movies for Elia Kazan, including On the Waterfront and A Face in the Crowd. He was Kazan’s principal editor and was also a wonderful teacher, too, as you can imagine. I learned a lot about editing from Milford. He was about the only one teaching at CCNY who was a notable filmmaker. Oh, there was also a celebrated surrealist filmmaker named Hans Richter, whom you may have heard of. [8] He became chairman of the documentary department. Most people considered Richter’s work to be awful and pretentious, but he seemed to enjoy quite a lot of attention and acclaim from his admirers.

  What about your fellow alumni? Did anyone else in your class go on to be successful in the industry?

  Let me think. [Pause] No, not really. I can’t think of anyone else. I think I was the only one. Of course, if they had moved forward and were successful in the documentary industry I wouldn’t know much about it, because I’ve never been steeped in the documentary world. Somebody might have been successful in that area as an editor or something. I do know that some of the guys who worked with me in my comedy shows became notable in different fields. For instance, one of them was Vic Ziegel, who later became a famous sports writer and columnist for the New York Post and the New York Daily News. Another guy was Paul Kagan who founded Paul Kagan Industries, which is one of the leading media research companies for motion pictures and television in the world. Paul’s really made a big fortune for himself.

  Did any famous filmmakers come to lecture you?

  Otto Preminger [9] once came to speak with us, but he only stayed for five minutes — literally! The students asked him all kinds of stupid questions and then one kid suddenly jumped up and claimed he was Preminger’s nephew. That’s all poor Otto had to hear. A moment later, he was out of there.

  Did you run any film clubs in college or organize any screenings?

  Oh, there were screenings all the time. They were showing everything from the famous silent Hollywood movies by filmmakers like D.W. Griffith all the way to some of the acclaimed foreign pictures by Ingmar Bergman, Rene Clair, and Akira Kurosawa. They screened some extraordinary movies at the school and it was truly revelatory. I mean, these films were unavailable anywhere else because of course there was no home video back then. Very often I would duck out of school early and go downtown to the Broadway theatres, where they had first-run movies and sometimes a stage show. In those days, they would often screen a movie and afterwards there would be a live performance onstage. I saw some incredible people perform like Danny Kaye, Jack Benny, and Abbott and Costello — they all appeared in person onstage! The movie would run and then they would come out and put on a show for forty-five minutes or an hour. Then the movie would come on again. I would sit through the picture a couple of times, just so I could see the stage show all over again. What was wonderful about that time was they didn’t throw you out after a screening. The movies were continuous and people just walked in whenever they got there. Nobody actually came in at the beginning of the movie. They simply showed up at the theater, bought their ticket and an usher with a flashlight took them to their seat. Subsequent to that, I actually worked as an usher at the Roxy Theatre for a part-time job, so I was showing people to their seats, too. I didn’t particularly like wearing that stupid usher’s uniform, I must say. I sometimes felt like an idiot.

  Was it a struggle getting money together during your college years?

  Well, CCNY was free. It was $15 a term for a registration fee. $15 for two terms was just $30 a year, so I went to college for four years for the princely sum of $120. That’s all my education cost me. Despite that, my father still wasn’t particularly happy about paying for the school books I needed. I remember he said to me, “Hey, you got books last year.” I said, “Dad, this is for a different class. Different classes require different books.” Anyway, I finally squeezed the money out of him and eventually graduated college. By that time, I was already writing scripts anyway.

  Did you make any short films at college?

  We made a film called Coney Never Closes. It was about a little girl who goes down to Coney Island and it’s all a mess as, at the time, Coney Island was more or less abandoned. All the rides in the amusement parks were shut down and were just rotting and rusting away. As this little girl wanders through the decimated ruins, in her imagination all the rides and attractions suddenly come alive again. It was a cute little movie. I don’t know where that one went either. That has sadly been lost, too. I really made no effort to salvage all these films.

  What was the budget and shooting schedule for Coney Never Closes?

  There was no budget! They simply gave us the cameras, then they gave us the
film, and then we went off and made our picture. That’s all there was.

  How did your fellow students and the faculty react to the film when it was first screened for them?

  I think it received a fairly average response. I mean, it was nothing extraordinary. Nobody declared, “This is the work of a future Orson Welles!”

  Did you make any other short films during your college years?

  That’s the only one I can remember, but I did edit some other people’s films, stuff like that. They would give us the raw footage and we had to cut it together, but I believe we only got to make one film of our own. The college provided us with the equipment and the other students in the class were assigned to be our support crew. Then, we would perform that duty for the other students and be their support crew when they went off to shoot their movies. That’s how it worked.

  In 1958, I believe you worked part-time as a pageboy at NBC.

  That’s right. I then became an NBC pageboy, working on different television shows, ushering the audience into the studio and providing services for the performers. One time, I remember actually meeting Bob Hope in the elevator at NBC. As we were standing there I said to him, “Well, Packy East, what are you doing here?” Now, Packy East was the name Hope boxed under as a kid and he thought it was amusing that I’d called him that. He then invited me to a screening that very same night of his new picture, Paris Holiday, in which he co-starred with the French comedian, Fernandel. It’s one of the worst movies Bob Hope ever made, I might add. It’s just dreadful! Hope asked me if I would bring some of the other NBC pages and guidettes to provide an audience, so I brought a whole bunch of people with me and we all went to the theater. I can remember saying to myself, “Okay, this is my big chance. I’m now going to get to write for Bob Hope! I’ll ingratiate myself to him and show him how clever I am. He’ll be so impressed.” When we all entered the screening room, Bob Hope was there. He got up and made the usual speech that everybody always makes when they run a rough cut of a picture: “Ladies and gentlemen, you will notice in the movie you are about to see that the color isn’t right and the sound is off, and some of the cutting is all confused, but you’ve got to remember” — and he was about to say that it was a work print — when I suddenly yelled out, “It’s a Bob Hope movie!” Well, everybody in the room laughed, except for Bob Hope. Right there, at that very moment, was the end of my possibly writing for Bob Hope. [Laughs] I had to be the clown of the class again, but Bob Hope didn’t like anybody being funnier than him.